Hospitals place urgent-care clinics in physicians' offices

Melissa Westphal

Tuesday

May 26, 2009 at 12:01 AMMay 26, 2009 at 5:10 AM

Local hospitals are staying closer to home to improve access to health care rather than partner with retail outlets and open convenient-care clinics in grocery stores and shopping malls. Health systems in the Rock River Valley have gone the route of opening their own convenient/immediate/prompt care clinics inside physicians’ offices, which they deem more affordable and reliable.

Local hospitals are staying closer to home to improve access to health care rather than partner with retail outlets and open convenient-care clinics in grocery stores and shopping malls.

Across the country, patients are seeking medical treatment for sore throats, ear infections and other ailments at clinics housed in Wal-Mart Supercenters and Walgreens pharmacies. Such retail locales usually stay open later and offer weekend hours for people who can’t see a doctor during regular business hours.

Health systems in the Rock River Valley have gone the route of opening their own convenient/immediate/prompt care clinics inside physicians’ offices, which they deem more affordable and reliable. That keeps patients closer to the systems for follow-up care while still providing later hours.

But hospital officials aren’t ruling out the possibility of partnering with retail outlets down the road.

“We’re sticking with what we have now, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never look at it again,” said Don Daniels, vice president of medical group management for SwedishAmerican Health System.

Both SwedishAmerican and Rockford Health System talked to Wal-Mart officials about building clinics inside their stores within the last two or three years.

“The decision we made rather than go into those (retail) institutions was to make ourselves more available with a broader scope of services,” said John Rhoades, chief operating officer of Rockford Health Physicians, a subsidiary of Rockford Health System.

Rockford Health Physicians has three convenient care locations, and Rhoades said they’re considering a fourth.

Hospital convenient-care clinics are typically staffed with physicians and nurses, while retail outlets often rely on licensed nurse practitioners. Patients haven’t necessarily cared about that difference at the TakeCare Health Clinics inside local Walgreens stores, company officials said.

The Rock River Valley has four TakeCare locations that have maintained consistent business since the first one opened nearly a year ago, said Wendy Edwards, the lead TakeCare nurse practitioner for the Rockford area.

“We’ve had a lot of compliments from people who are just happy to have us as an option,” Edwards said.

TakeCare clinics canvass the region to see which physicians are accepting new patients so they can refer their patients for follow-up care. In some cases, they will call on behalf of patients for necessary appointments.

Melissa Westphal can be reached at (815) 987-1341 or mwestpha@rrstar.com.

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